Better In Your Head?--LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR

 

Spoiler Alert: Special Dark is the best in the bag.

THE BOOK-Written by Judith Roessner, released 1975

THE MOVIE-Directed & written by Richard Brooks, released 1977

THE STORY- Terry Dunn lives a double life--teacher by day, cruiser by night. She insists on a carefree existence unimaginable for women even a decade prior. Loved ones long to ground her spirit, but the air up there is hot with sex, drugs, death...the stuff life is made of. 

MIND THE GAP-Based on the real-life-and-death story of Roseann Quinn, Looking For Mr. Goodbar is so emotionally devastating that two decades after first experiencing book and film (in that order), fragments of the ending still pop into my head on occasion. 

The truths Goodbar coaxes forth are simplistic and shattering. Every time you walk outside into the world, you take a risk. Human interaction is rife with possibility. One-night stands can result in furtive visits from unwanted guests. Death, although unlikely, cannot be ruled out, for anyone, anywhere. This sad reality is, we are told incessantly, the fault of the victim. In every man lurks a beast, and the others around them must act accordingly and keep the beast at bay.

Terry's case of "ugly duckling syndrome" is surpassed in meanness only by her Catholic guilt. The film overdoses on the latter whilst paying the former dust. Diane Keaton is pretty, outgoing, bratty even--accusations I can't level too boldly against the Terry in Judith Rossner's novel. Book Terry is driven by a self-destructive mindset undetectable onscreen. Keaton's performance is primarily faultless; her supple rhythms are so infectious, their absence acts as a portent. 

Richard Gere is magnetic as hyperactive lunkhead Tony, and Tom Berenger makes the most of his time as Gary, a man shrouded in discordant shames. William Atherton and Alan Feinstein, in sharp contrast, each shit the bed before the lights go out. Ahterton apparently prepared by carving a wooden lizard, and Feinstein's professor is so far from the matter-of-fact manipulator I imagined, I can safely assume he prepared for the role by not reading the book.

Looking For Mr. Goodbar is up there with Schindler's List and Marriage Story as great films I've no desire to watch again. Judith Rossner detested the thing, citing Terry's makeover into a "happy" seductress, and the script's decision to turn the relationship between Terry and her father from one of solemn misgivings into one of clamorous animosity. Rossner deliberately avoided "pop sociology" in her work, and her work is all the stronger.

Then and now, Terry Dunn stands a fair distance from society's ideal woman. She enjoys sex, but bristles at emotional commitment. She enjoys teaching children, but bristles at motherhood. Women are typically celebrated not for their ambition and carnality, but for their passivity and compliance. So much has changed. So much resists change.

Looking For Mr. Goodbar and Annie Hall in the same year, damn Diane Keaton had the range.

I mean, Christ, can't a broad go for a walk? Can't a chick down some drinks? Can't a girl pass out? Must every situation be a perilous one? If Terry's fate--Roseann's fate--was inevitable, isn't that a more devastating indictment of men? Why villainize the prey and protect the predator?

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD- Stroke. Scream. Snarl. Snap. Stab. Shit.

Movie over book? It's happened a bit this series. So is that how we see it out? Well, the execution of the ending alone almost tipped the scales for me here. I couldn't tear my eyes away; I wanted to tear my eyes out of my head. The novel, though it ends essentially the same, didn't leave me so physically affected. What it did give me that those visceral visuals did not, was a picture of a woman. Diane Keaton plays a woman whose present is paramount. The past happened, doesn't matter; the future hasn't yet happened, might not matter. It is now or never, literally. Day after day, class after class. Night after night, man after man. She survives on a diet of wine and praise (and for a bit, white powder). The film shows us a woman alive.

The book, meanwhile, shows us a woman living. If Rossner's prose comes off exhausted by the last few pages, that's understandable. The film shows us the woman Terry's become; the book shows us the becoming, wonderfully, without a smidgen of showiness. We see the mind games and power plays that harden her heart, culminating in a break-up so bad it leaves her bed-bound. We see the dreams and nightmares that make a more convincing case for monogamy than the sternest lecture ever could. I don't wonder the author was tired by the end. So was I. 

All hail the slow burn.

Rest in peace, Roseann Quinn. Better she had lived, than the story of Terry Dunn be told.